It’s not often that universities prioritise their social media strategy. With multiple plates spinning at any one time, the general focus is on students, recruitment, teaching, and research. Even worse, social media strategists are not invited to the decision-making table, or involved in senior leadership teams at all, despite being the people most familiar with stakeholders’ needs, wants, and feelings towards the university.
Using innovative processes to develop online communities, Jenny Li Fowler provides a space for stakeholders globally to come together. An award winning director and journalist, Jenny possesses a unique ability to foster relationships, despite leading one of higher education’s biggest online platforms for a single university. Jenny has truly cultivated MIT as we know it, and we’re excited to unpack her wisdom and advice for others also wanting to excel in higher-ed social media.
Getting global communities to come to your page and stay on it
It’s one thing getting individuals to visit your page, but another thing altogether when it comes to persuading them to stay. In order to truly build an online community with over 6 million followers, Jenny tells us, “you’ve got to see more than just the follower count. Really, followings can be an empty number you’re chasing. What you really want is your community, your people, to have another space to congregate and know one another. I want people to be part of our culture beyond MIT’s physical location, as like minded people who are really interested in what we’re doing here span the globe. We really want to bring them in and be excited about our research and innovation. That’s what really counts. If you get this engagement and excitement, then you’ll genuinely grow.”
Jenny also highlights the importance of tapping into her community’s ‘love language’. “We never try to be anything outside of what we are – we know what our strengths are, and we know why people follow MIT. We’re a bunch of creative and quirky folks whose love language is maths and numbers. So, we post what we are about. We stay in our lane but we want to be the strongest in this lane and this is how you find your community. We don’t post TikTok dance trends or memes, unless they’re Star Wars related or something that fits our culture, but we create content that aligns with our expertise.
People don’t need universities to comment on every single thing, especially if it’s not a part of its area of expertise. It’s important to know what your lane consists of and what your people are looking for so you can provide insight, value, or humour into their lives. Then they will stay.”
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MIT communicating with their digital community
The importance of the online listener and adapting tone of voice
Whilst MIT speaks up on topics that relate to their expertise, Jenny positions listening to her digital community as equally important in driving engagement. This is because, “listeners might not be sharing online but I can assure you that they’re sharing offline.”
Jenny continues with, “listening as the brand in terms of what your community is saying, what they’re feeling, how they’re giving you feedback – it’s really important to pick up on this. Listening is valuable, it helps you to understand what space your audience is in and if you need to adapt your tone and content accordingly. For example, our community was talking to us a lot more online during the pandemic, and that made sense since we were no longer on campus. One of the phrases our team would see repeatedly were, “we miss campus”, and “we miss being together”- we all did. So we started incorporating more personal pronouns into our content. For example, instead of “everyone”, we would say “we miss you too”. We responded to our community as a whole and adapted our tone. We would no longer say “have a great weekend!” on a Friday, because it wasn’t a happy time. Instead we switched it up to say, “it’s the weekend, take a break”. We really changed our approach to respond to how our community was feeling.”
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Adapting MIT’s tone of voice during the pandemic
At the end of the day, online communities are human, social media managers are human, and you’re still trying to build relationships. Jenny told us that when universities really take the time to listen to their audiences, and you show this through the type of content you’re posting, then your audience feels it too.
One example of this was when the MIT social media team invested a lot of effort into upcoming Mother’s Day posts. Jenny told us that she then picked up on the fact that her online community were telling her that this holiday made them feel uncomfortable, and that it wasn’t a happy or celebratory day for everyone. So, MIT made the decision to stop posting about Mother’s Day altogether.
Advocating for social media when leaders don’t see its importance
“I give tips about justifying the importance of social media to senior leadership in my book. Firstly, emotional intelligence is an underrated skill when it comes to social media management. Your social media managers are in these spaces everyday. They’re the ones reading the comments, good and bad. You pick up on your communitys’ emotions. Yes, we are the strategists and the data analysts of these spaces but it’s also time for these people to be invited into advisory roles. They should be advising senior leaders at the institution, supervisors, and vice presidents. There is so much value for university leadership teams to listen and seek recommendations from social media managers, because they have their ear on the ground. They’re in tune to what messages will work and what messages won’t work.
“If you’re not invited to the table, bring a folding chair.”Shirley Chisholm
“Shirley Chisholm was the first black-American woman that was voted into the US Congress. One of my favourite things she said was, ‘if you’re not invited to the table, bring a folding chair’. So if you’re a social media manager and you know you have something to bring to the decision making process and know you should be there, lean in and get in that room. Make sure you can get into the inboxes of leadership early and regularly so that they know your name. Your folding chair is data so give this to them regularly through weekly or monthly reports. Give snippets into the fact that you’re the expert in this space. You want to develop a relationship over time so when things do come up, you’re top of mind. You want leaders to care about what you’re saying.”
Falling in love with a higher education brand
We know all too well that there is a lot of noise in social media and pressure to post on certain topics, particularly when you are managing university channels. Jenny told us, “I have conversations with my team all the time around whether it makes sense for us to comment on something. For example, our digital community was moved when Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away. I myself was sad. But Justice Ginsburg was not an affiliate, we don’t have a law school, she’s never spoken on MIT’s campus. Why would we say something? It didn’t make any sense. If you have to work hard to find a connection to a person or topic that’s not related to your brand, then you’re going outside of your lane.”
Jenny’s book, “Organic Social Media: How to Build Flourishing Online Communities”, is available now. Purchase through KoganPage and enjoy a 20% discount with code OSM20.
You can listen to our podcast episode with Jenny over on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
